NaNoWriMo

Code of Conduct

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Codes of Conduct Updated: April 2, 2021 Welcome to NaNoWriMo! This is a unique community that exists to support you through all aspects of the writing process, provide a home for any discussion that comes to mind, and help you find like-minded individuals. Like any public place, we need the community’s help to make this a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive space for people, from lurkers to the most involved participant! Here are some guidelines to help make your community experience a great one. Codes of Conduct Our Intention Our goal is to foster and steward a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community for writers and the discussions that are important to them. Our vision is to create a thoughtful and generous community of people that trust and care about each other, are curious about others and the world around them, and are dedicated to growing as writers.   Building a Diverse and Inclusive Community We celebrate and welcome diversity of all races, genders, sexualities, religions, and countries of origin. Hate speech is not allowed. If any post contributes to the marginalization of another writer, whether through racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, ageist, fatphobic, classist, or other bigoted language, we will remove that post and/or poster. Purposeful and/or violent hate speech will result in an immediate ban from our website and forums. Please remain open to education. If you accidentally say something hurtful, fighting the instinct to be defensive often helps others respond with constructive feedback. Please respect our affinity groups. Don’t apply to join a private affinity group if you do not match the criteria for that group. In public affinity forums (like our age-based forums), if you don’t share the identity of that group, please behave as a guest and follow the lead of those who do share that identity. Consider adding your pronouns to your user profile. This will help others know how to correctly address you, and will also make sharing pronouns feel easier for everybody! You can view NaNoWriMo’s values and action on diversity, equity, and inclusion here.   Content and Trigger Warnings Use content and trigger warnings thoughtfully. It’s respectful and helpful to include trigger or content warnings when you’re dealing with sensitive topics. This can include (but is not limited to) sexual content of any kind, abuse, torture, murder, violence, self-harm, disordered eating, suicide, and child abuse/neglect. We often write about these things, and that’s okay! What we ask is that you be mindful of those participants who may find these things triggering, traumatic, or simply don’t want to be included in that discussion. If someone asks that you include a warning, please do so. It’s not our place to determine what is “valid” enough to include a warning! Ignoring a request for a warning will result in post removal and a 24-hour mute. Those who continue to post sensitive content and ignore requests to include warnings will be removed from the group. If you’re not sure… err on the side of caution or ask a mod!   Abuse and Bullying Any interaction or conflict that becomes abusive, mean-spirited, or threatening is unacceptable. In most circumstances, we’ll send a warning to any member found in violation of these conditions. Subsequent violations can result in sanctions on your account without warning.   Violent and Sexually Explicit Content If you are posting potentially triggering or sensitive content in public spaces (regional spaces, event/write-in descriptions and spaces, forums), be respectful and include trigger or content warnings. On the forums, please make sure you are posting to the appropriate forums for your topic. If you wish to share a writing excerpt that’s explicit or violent, please link to it elsewhere rather than posting it directly. adult content is easier to opt into when it’s a link. If you aren’t sure if your contribution counts as explicit, err on the side of caution. Ask a moderator if you’re not sure or need clarification about what’s appropriate.   Improve the Discussion Help us make this a great place for discussion by working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your contribution adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later. The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said. One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics/conversation before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests. Read &amp. respond. The best part of the community is the interaction. Please remember to read on our site as much as you post!   Conspiracies and Misinformation NaNoWriMo will not provide a platform for any conspiracy theories. Discussion of them is one thing: we’re not pretending they don’t exist and wielding an indiscriminate banhammer. What we will not tolerate is the promotion of those ideas. If we determine that a statement on our site encourages and promotes a harmful and unfactual theory, we will err on the side of caution and remove it.   Engage with Others in Good Faith Disagreement is often necessary to learn and grow as a community! When engaging in a disagreement with others you believe are acting in good faith, focus on criticizing ideas instead of people. Please avoid: <ul> <li>Name-calling</li> <li>Ad-hominem attacks</li> <li>Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content</li> <li>Knee-jerk contradiction</li> </ul> If you suspect that another person in our community is engaging in bad faith (by trolling, sea-lioning, or otherwise engaging without consideration of other people’s humanity and without the intention to grow themselves or our community), please flag their posts and/or call in moderators or other staff as needed.   Your Participation Counts The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make NaNoWriMo an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not. In the forums, Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too. Let’s leave our community better than we found it.   If You See a Problem, Report It When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. If you’re on the forums, just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention. If you see bad behavior on our site outside of the forums, take a screenshot and email our staff at tickets@nanowrimo.uservoice.com. In order to maintain our community, moderators and staff reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Our team does not preview new content from users. the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.   Strive to Be Generous with Your Fellow Writers Do not correct someone’s grammar unless requested to do so. This may be a writing group, but no one is expected to have perfect grammar all the time. Many participants are non-native English speakers, neurodivergent, or disabled. If you aren’t asked to help with grammar, don’t volunteer your services unsolicited. Engage with the content of what the person is sharing, rather than the “correctness” of their phrasing. Don’t cause harm to each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information. Personal conflicts should not be aired on the forums. The forums are a place for conversations between many different people. We have a private messaging system that is perfectly suited for conversations just between two people. Respect our discussion. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize our conversation spaces. Take a break when you need to. If conversations get heated, consider taking a break before making your next response. Don’t feel the need to respond immediately. Ignore cheaters and trolls. Every year, we get dozens of posts accusing others of cheating at NaNoWriMo. Please—don’t worry about cheaters. NaNoWriMo is an honor-system challenge. no one is cheating anyone but themselves if they don’t write the novel they said they wrote. If you see a post that you suspect is a troll (i.e. someone posting something deliberately inflammatory just to get a rise out of people), please do not engage them. Just let it go, they’ll move along without any feedback.   Site and Forum Guidelines ☀️ All-ages Spaces Be aware that all public spaces on the website, including the regional spaces and event/write-in spaces, are all-ages. Many of our forums are all-ages forums (these will display a sun icon, and currently include #coffeehouse, #newbies, and all #regions.) We have many teenagers who frequent our site, and while we don’t expect you to be perfect angels everywhere, we do ask that you maintain a family-friendly tone (no foul language) in all-ages spaces. If you have questions about what is and isn’t permitted, just ask a moderator, or use the help forums for trickier questions.   Permitted Content Post Only Your Own Content You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law. You may not expose any other person’s personal information. Profanity Guidelines Profanity is not allowed in: <ul> <li> Usernames</li> <li>Regional landing pages and their chat spaces</li> <li>Event/write-in descriptions and spaces</li> <li>Forums subject lines</li> <li>Any content posted to an all-ages forum.</li> </ul> Outside of all-ages forums, profanity is permitted provided it isn’t being used abusively. User Avatar Guidelines Only images considered “safe for all ages” are appropriate for your author picture. Don’t use nudity, profanity, or violent imagery in user pictures, as they may appear in all-ages friendly places on our website and in the forums (which includes regional landing pages).   Sharing Your Work You’re free to write whatever you want in your writing projects: any subject, any characters, and any language. You are under no obligation to show it to anyone, including us. You don’t even have to talk about what you’re writing! You can post a summary and short excerpt of your writing project on the website. You’re also welcome to post short (1500 words or less) excerpts of your work in the appropriate forums. Please remember that your writing project details are visible to all participants on our website unless you change your privacy settings, or are posting in non-public forums. We prohibit posting violent and/or sexually explicit content directly to our website and forums. If you want to share your explicit fiction, we encourage you to post that writing offsite and include a link with appropriate warnings.   Keep the Forums Tidy Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. <ul> <li> Start topics in the right category. We will move miscategorized topics and posts, but help us by making sure! Ask a mod if you’re not sure.</li> <li> Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics or forums. We’ll close any duplicates. Pick the single best location and post once!</li> <li> Keep threads on topic. Off-topic discussion may be split to new threads. Use Reply as a Linked Topic to start a divergent conversation.</li> <li> Use the Like button. Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed” use the like button to show your appreciation or agreement!</li> <li> Read pinned posts and the site FAQs before posting in a forum. Pinned posts are helpful posts stuck (pinned) at the top of most of our forums. These are sometimes guides to getting the most out of a forum, and can also serve as forums-specific FAQs. When a certain question gets asked repeatedly, we’ll often pin answers to that question to the top of the forum.</li> <li> Observe the forum categories. Since there are so many participants and so many different conversations, we’ve divided the forums up into different lounges. Please pick an appropriate lounge to post in, and only post the same item in one area. Duplicate threads will be deleted. Comments that are posted in the wrong forum may be moved to a place where they’ll find better conversation-mates.</li> <li> Give your post a great subject line. Try to pull in your potential helpers by giving your post a great subject line. Tell folks what you’re looking for, what you’re complaining about, or what you want to celebrate, and more people will be sure to read your message.</li> </ul>   Focus on Writing Discussion Unless you’re in a forum or other space that explicitly welcomes non-writing-related discussion, please keep your focus on writing-related topics. Whether it’s plots, characters, techniques, we’re here to support your writing! In regional spaces, write-in/event spaces, and other spaces on the NaNoWriMo website, off-topic discussions may include memes, “plot inspiration” news articles, random comments that aren’t related to your writing or NaNoWriMo, or links to things that aren’t writing-related. Sharing something non-writing related and introducing it as a “plot bunny” or “writing prompt” isn’t enough to make it writing-related. We allow a wiggle room for reading- or book-related posts but if we deem it to be too far off the beaten path, we’ll remove it. On our forums, please pay attention to the specific category you’re in, and make sure your post or comment is on topic for the forum, category, and/or topic at hand. Debates are best posted in #outside-the-box and tagged appropriately. If your contribution is off-topic, our moderators will either move it to the appropriate place, or remove it.   Powered By You This site is operated by your friendly staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us at tickets@nanowrimo.uservoice.com.   Moderators and Admins While our admins are NaNoWriMo staff, most of our moderators are volunteers. Please treat them kindly! Abuse of moderators will not be tolerated. If you have any questions about how we moderate, questions about specific moderation actions, suggestions for the group itself (including possible policies and suggestions about how we respond to problematic posts) we absolutely welcome those! You can message either Tim Kim or Heather Dudley, (group messages are fine, too, if you want both of us, or want to bring others into the conversation!), send an email to our staff through tickets@nanowrimo.uservoice.com, or comment on the public moderation post. If you need to report a moderator action, please message Tim Kim and Heather Dudley in a group message, or email us at tickets@nanowrimo.uservoice.com.   Additional Resources <ul> <li>Frequently Asked Questions/Tutorial</li> <li>Public Moderation Policies and Guide – This is a guide that is meant for moderators primarily, which we’re making public for transparency and accountability.</li> <li>Public Forums Moderation Record</li> <li>Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion</li> <li>Terms and Conditions – Our terms and conditions describe your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use our website and forums, you must agree to abide by these terms.</li> </ul>